I got this on a whim because Michael Caine is one of my top three serious actors along with Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins, and my assumption was that he would not stoop to a simple Death Wish kind of film. This is a uniquely British film that melds themes well-described by other reviewers.
My primary purpose here is to flag this at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog as one of 117 DVDs for smart people that don't like run of the mill movies. This is worth watching and the ending is especially surprising and alone worth the wait.
A few other crime-related action films I recommend:
I like the first and most popular review by the scholar. Here I will provide a snap-shot of my own and a couple of quotations from a rather good wikipedia review of Thoreau.
The film was longer, better, and had more stars than I expected, including William Hurt. Triteness was avoided. Above all, this movie is righteous and timely as we contemplate the present situation.
From Wikipedia on Thoreau:
The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is “not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,- the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
The movie ends where I expected to begin. And now America begins anew, with a convergence of forces in 2012, where I had hoped it might end with peace and prosperity for all. The fight has only now begun as the public has awakened to the injustices done at our expense and in our name.
RIGHTEOUS.
Here are two lists of lists of summary reviews of non-fiction work that bears on the current and future nature of the world. Both are at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog under REVIEWS.
All About Tina Fey–She is Leslie Nielsen for Smart People
December 5, 2010
I cut this movie off a third of the way into it, then came back to it later, and my over-all conclusion as a result is that this movie is all about Tina Fey, her audition for the future, and if viewed in that light, it is both a delight and worth watching all the way through.
The movie is a mixed bag of boring married pathos made funny, Tiny Fey practicing a wide variety of subtle and not-so-subtle emotions and facial expressions and body language (including an upper body that is world class, a lower body that could use a little trimming), and over-all, a full-length screen test.
Bottom line: more of Tiny Fey on screen would be most welcome. She will find her groove, and when she does, it will be richly rewarding for all of us.
For years I have written about the Defense Power Games — front loading and political engineering — as they are practiced by the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex. Ā My 1990 pamphlet on this subject was written to explain why the end of the Cold War would not result in a lasting peace dividend — a prediction that has come true to a degree that astonishes me.
As I explained in Section II of the pamphlet, “front loading is the practice of planting seed money for new programs while downplaying their future obligations. This game, which is a clever form of the old-fashioned “bait-and-switch,” makes it easier to sell high-cost programs to skeptics in the Pentagon and Congress. Political engineering is the strategy of spreading dollars, jobs, and profits to as many important congressional districts as possible. By making voters dependent on government money flows, the political engineers put the squeeze on Congress to support the front-loaded program once its true costs become apparent. Front loading and political engineering are about increasing the flow of money; the former starts the money flowing while the latter tries to lock the spigot open, and in American politics, control of the money spigot is power.”
My discussion focused on defense procurement programs, which are by far the most developed and ritualized form of the games , but the central ideas behind these power games — a bait and switch operation to set up an extortion operation — apply to all government taxing and spending programs. Ā In fact front loading and political engineering are now ubiquitous practices that are openly celebrated by cynical political operatives — the fact that they are destroying the idea of using a system of checks and balances to hold the peoples representatives accountable in a democratic republic does not seem to matter. Ā Their effects, for example, can be scene in the corruption federal accounting systems.
To those readers who think I am taking this idea too far, I recommend the attached article, which is a good statement of where the effects of the rug merchant politics shaped by Ā front loading and political engineering power games take us.
Chuck Spinney
Published on Friday, December 3, 2010 by Think Progress
As debateĀ rages in Washington over the Bush tax cuts, set to expire at the end of this year, the Bush administration officials who initiated the steep tax cuts are celebrating what they see as an apparent victory, sinceĀ signs point to a temporary extension of all the cuts. The Daily Beastās Howard KurtzĀ interviewed Dan Bartlett, Bushās former communications director, and Andy Card, Bushās former chief of staff, among others, and they were pleased at how the expiration debate has played out:
āWe knew that, politically, once you get it into law,Ā it becomes almost impossible to remove it,ā says Dan Bartlett, Bushās former communications director. āThatās not a bad legacy.Ā The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.ā […]
…however quaint that term may seem. We are at war – a hot war in Afghanistan where six Americans were killed just this past Monday, and a shadowy world war where enemies from Yemen to Portland, Ore., are planning holy terror.
The Marines are the most uncomfortable with the idea of lifting the ban, according to the Pentagon study that polled each service. Nearly 60 percent of Marines in combat jobs said the change would dent fighting mettle.
A self-explanatory and compelling story of initiative, airmanship, and officership.
Phi Beta Iota: A few points of balance….
1.Ā Military pay in wartime is very very good–the only people who should be exempt are the 4% on the front-line who take 80% of the casualties, everyone else is full-up on unearned combat pay, clubs, post exchanges, and ice cream shops.
2.Ā Assange is Australian and has not violated any US laws.Ā Charles Krauthammer knows this and is venting for the ignorant that love him.Ā This is a similar situation to where CIA claims it cannot tell Congress anything to protect sources and methods, when all it is protecting is its culture of corruption and its grotesque incompetence at operations, analysis, and technology.Ā WikiLeaks is the antidote to Rule by Secrecy, Transparency is the 21st Century Killer App.Ā Get over it, the game has changed and the public is on track to being sovereign again.
3.Ā The Marines are the single most attractive service for gay men seeking “real men” and the dirty little secret of the Marine Corps has for a very long time been that it hosts a wealth of gay staff non-commissioned officers as well as lesbian officers who thrive in that environment.Ā Cultures change over time–at one time the Israelis were right when they said women in combat took the focus off the mission.Ā That is less true now.Ā The day will come when gay and lesbian are accepted biological facts rather than cultural biases, on balance C/JCS is right.Ā Red light green light protocols work just fine in same-sex situations as they do in opposite sex situations, as to administrative housing regulations.
4.Ā Aircraft #13 is a truly great story.Ā It's the kind of story that benefits from holding the moral high ground.
The first of two on IC failures….as if we didn't need any more proof.Ā DefDog
Reports indicate China's fifth generation jet fighter rollout far ahead of U.S. intel projections
East-Asia-Intel.com, December 1, 2010
Chinese military Internet reports indicate that China may roll out its first fifth generation fighter as early as this month, far earlier than the Pentagon projected China would have the advance warplane.
Second report…..
Series of U.S. intelligence failures on North Korea highlighted by tour of enrichment facility
East-Asia-Intel.com, December 1, 2010
North Korea's recent disclosure of a new uranium enrichment facility with
a light water reactor and centrifuge cascade is seen as a serious U.S.
intelligence and policy failure that goes back over a decade.
Phi Beta Iota: We do not control what our various contributors post, while reserving the right to comment.Ā These are both serious intelligence failures, both indicative of the inability of the US Intelligence Community to do its job across the board, from collection to processing to analysis.Ā There are many other failures, for example with respect to China's new superiority in submarine stealth (able to sneak past an entire carrier battle group to pop up immediately astern the central carrier), and their overwhelming superiority in cyber-space, where they have mastered, among many other capabilities, the art of riding electrical power circuits into US military computers from Peterson AFB to Fort Meade MD.Ā As troubling as these failures are, they are actually the least of our worries.Ā Of greater importance to the over-all security of the US is the culture of corruption, not just at CIA but at all the agencies including DIA, the FBI, and the NRO, as well as within the service intelligence centers.Ā Just as General Mike Flynn is on record as saying that US Intelligence is “irrelevant” in Afghanistan, so also can it be said that US intelligence is “irrelevant” across the board–it is not contributing anything warranting its $90 billion a year budget, with nothing to show at the strategic, operational, tactical, or technical (acquisition) levels.Ā We need not be this incapacitated.Ā We are choosing to be ineffective, and that is most troubling of all.
Professor and Director of Project on Information Technology and Political Islam
Posted: December 3, 2010 10:57 AM
EXTRACT:
But Mubarak's real enemy is no longer the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a complex, fractured umbrella group, and the practice of faith and opposition to Mubarak may not be enough to hold it together much longer. There is also the Kefaya movement, a loosely organized network of cosmopolitan Nasserites, Islamists, and leftists, that has organized some successful protests but has lost some momentum.
Mubarak's real opponents are tech-savvy activists and wired civic groups.
In the last few years, the internet has become the primary incubator of democratic political conversation. The state has never had this role, and the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the exclusive provider. Instead, civil society in Egypt has moved online, using the information infrastructure of digital media as the place for difficult political conversations about regime change, gender and political life, and transnational Islamic identity.
This infrastructure is beyond the reach of the state.
Surprising–Did Not Disappoint
Righteous, Timely, Absorbing
